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Sunday, May 24, 2009

Who's a Forro?

Today was the first of our excursions! We have excursions every weekend. Most of these are trips to different beautiful beaches around Brazil. However, this particular Saturday excursion to a beach that was 2 hours away decided to become an extremely rainy day. It rarely ever rains in Fortaleza, but for some reason, the weather has been VERY unusual, and it has rained almost everyday.

The thing about studying abroad that you must remember is that it is NEVER what you expect, and therefore, you have to make the most out of whatever comes your way. Even in the pouring down rain and gray clouds, we still saw the beauty in the beach we were at and stayed there all day! We played an intense game of frisbee in the sloshing sand and body surfed in the huge waves the rain storm had caused. It was so much fun, but afterwards we were all exhausted. However, the day was far from over.

Later that night we all went out to dance "Forro". Forro is a traditional Brazilian country dance where there is a live band who plays instruments such as the accordion, drum, guitar, and of course... the triangle. When we heard about this type of dancing in class, all of us where pretty skeptical about whether or not we would be able to dance it! Much to our surprise, once we got out on that dance floor, it was quite an experience.

Amber and Dasha practicing their balance before dancing.

The very first guy who asked me to dance was not some handsome Brazilian, but an 80 year old man. I looked for a moment at his wrinkly extended hand and decided old people, especially this little old man, are cute in their own way! I was surprised to see how well the old man could dance, and from the way he was swinging me around, I was afraid I was going to break his poor hip! But he held his own and ended up being one of the best dancers on the floor! Once I learned how to dance Forro from the little grandpa, the rest of the night felt like it was straight out of "Havannah Nights" for all of us. We danced the night away and at one point sang as a group "Dancing Queen," which got some strange looks from the Brazilians! It was overall one of the best nights in Brazil so far! Thank goodness I had Social Dance class to prepare me for this! Otherwise, I might have been the one with a broken hip!